“Humanity--A Ride in a Faulty Ferris Wheel” - Farid Talukder

In his famous book “Roots”, great writer Alex Haley mentioned that in the eighth night ( night after the day fall of naming day  ) after the birth of their new born son named Kunta Kinte, Omoro took out his son under the moon and stars. He took him alone and walked to the edge of the village, lifted little Kunta up with his face to the heavens, and said, “Fend Kiling dorong leh warrata ka iteh tee” ( Behold—the only thing greater than yourself ).

Though, in this article it is not my purpose to discuss the naming culture in a small village named Juffure of a West African country Gambia, or it's just Mr. Haley's improvisation for the sake of giving the story a heart touching feeling. I also have no intention to dig in depth whether Mr. Haley, truly was the 7th generation descendant of that great Kunta Kinte ( as he claimed ) . The objective of this article rather a try to look back our journey towards civilization and all important humanity. Historically it is true that, in the 1700's, young men like Kunta Kinte or someone like him ( and thousands and thousands like him ) used to be captured by the slave traders' net or by other means like an animal in their home territory. Once they were caught, they were dumped into ships which were bound to sail back towards the so called civilized western world. These human slaves ( or human animal..! ) were then sold to the slave trade market. I assume most of us, we know this story now. In Mr. Haley's Roots, Kunta Kinte was one of these ill fated strong young men. After being sold to one of American slave traders, obviously everything of Kunta's life had been changed except his skin colour. He was even renamed to “Toby”. He tried to escape from enslavement 4 times but each time he got caught. In his final attempt, he was given condition that either he will be castrated or will have his foot cut off. And he choose the second of the two punishments, meaning he would never be able to escape again! In a nut shell that's Mr. Haley's Roots story. That's one of the tiny picture of horrific slave trade story.. One of the darkest tale of human civilization..!!

Slavery that is highlighted in Roots, first started by Portuguese traders sometime in mid 15th century, though the history of slavery goes back much further in time. In Ancient Egypt the slaves used to be buried alive with their dead Pharaoh king with a belief that masters still will need their service in next life. Like what we had  Satidaha System in our culture. Where widows were burned to death alive with her dead husband..! In Islam,  we know that Belal ( Muslims remember him for his magnificent voice for Azan ) was a slave. Prophet Muhammed advised to behave very generously with the slaves like a family member, if possible make them free ( what he did for Belal ) but did not pass any Islamic law to abolish the slavery completely. In America, law against slavery first came in 1865 when President Abraham Lincoln in his famous speech of  Gettysburg Address  ( 1863 ) brought this issue and started working to abolish it. Since then, we travelled quite a  long path but still there is a legitimate question, has the slavery system really disappeared from our world? Almost 1400 hundred years before, in his last speech at the field of Arafa, Prophet Muhammed clearly mentioned about equality of human race irrespective of geographical position, colour or race. Have we been able to establish his sermon in our heart? Picture in Middle East and all other corners of the world clearly dictates the answer is no.

Yes, we have achieved a bit but certainly it is not even close, where we wanted to be. Looks like humanity is having a ride in a swing. We made laws, declared different days to celebrate world wide to uphold the humanity. But the truth is, it does not work. Rather it turns out to be another occasion for business men to make some capital gain! Why..??

It is almost impossible to talk about humanity keeping aside the factors of money, power politics and religion. So, to find the answer, in first phase, we have to admit two simple truths. First, since the dawn of civilization and to date all the laws, rules and organizations that have been established in the society were made by the privileged and powerful class. Secondly, since the under privileged and poor class had no role to play in making these laws and organizations, in reality, these are not so much to salvage this class as it is to protect the interest of elites and to make this world a preferred harbor place of their choice and obviously for them. I will not be surprised if etiquetted and so called civilized world find it as a sinister idea. Does not matter. It is what it is and it is the truth. Not hard to bring hundreds of examples but at this moment like to mention that, name of UN Organization should come to the top of the list. In most cases it seems that this organization is just for stamping the evil works of mighty devils. Though in very seldom cases it tries to avoid war ( like Iraq war ) but reality is, it’s completely useless when it goes against western allies greedy and selfish wishes. Well, it’s true that the UN works to support and provide humanitarian aids to war-torn areas, but still where and when they will move forward with aids also completely depend on the green signal of western block. First thing first, to remind us that most of these crisis in present and past world is man-made. These are and were created by the powerful and their puppets to quench their devilish desire and interests. Keep in mind that this powerful class will never destroy or kill their lower domains completely. They need them to be alive to serve their interest. Otherwise their comforts will be in jeopardy. It’s just the modest form of that Pharaoh slavery system. A dirty game to keep their pocket and power healthy. UN is the bigger model which prototypes the smaller model of any individual community on earth surface.

Now, talking about religions in general, looks like again, with its philosophy  it has not much influence and  control over elite classes as it has on have-not’s and for few other troubled life people! In fact, the relation between the elites and religions is interesting in other ways. They use the religion often to secure their interest as necessary. In primitive society, the feudal lords or the feudal monarchs used to declare themselves as a mediator and communication path between  unseen mighty power ( we can call it God here ) and the general mass. That was the best way to give themselves a separate powerful identity above all others and that trend used to carry forward through their descendants. This system may still be present in some tribal communities in the world. Not exactly but almost the same old-fashioned monarchism we see in some middle eastern countries including Saudi Arabia. Now, the world's most dominant power, the western allies, they pretend that they are broken hearted because some countries have no democracy. So, they use their powers to dethrone those dictators and to ( like now in Venezuela and previously it was in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so and so.. ) bring back democracy and human rights there. Interestingly, the case is not the same in terms of those middle eastern countries. Because they  serve their interest penny to penny but the others are not or were not. Here democracy, human rights, freedom of speech does not matter. So, forget about those. Those are some few tools of words that they use when needed to make the world their puppet. It’s all about money. Money can buy, throw out or change concept of humanity and civilization anytime, anywhere it wants. So far I understand, I belong a million miles away from Donald Trump's life ethics. However, I  say thanks to him for his candid answer about a media question. He mentioned clearly to answer a question regarding Adnan Khashoggi's killing, that his country has 600 billion dollar business interest ( or any figure close to that ) with KSA, so he is not going to make a mess with Saudi Regime regarding this issue. There may a few escape goats possibly now in trial but the main culprit is still unexposed as usual. Someday the case will be cold. This is one country, one example. Local or international, this thing happens every nook and corner of the world very often.

Looks like derailment never leaves me alone! Have a feeling already now out of track from my main topic and that's my habit. Habit.. good habit, bad habit, rabbit habit.  Yeah.. we human being have lot of habits. But rabbit habit is the most common one. Forget about the world stage, even in local stage very often we see that a weaker ( weaker in all sense ) person getting brutally tortured by the powerful ( powerful could be by numerous means ) for no reason or sometimes for standing for the truth and against the evil work. Majority of us just watch this silently, never protest and sometimes hide ourselves in rabbit hole for fear..!! I think there is a Hadith that says, who ever is doing wrong and who ever just watches it without protest, both are same culprit. So, with this attitude, all of us who think  'oh.. we are blameless , actually we are not'.

Let's come back to religion concept to explore it’s contribution towards humanity. Just need to look bit more in depth' objectively without any bias. Religion preaches about humanity to some extent no question about it. But what about the major part of it and what about it’s application and impact on our real life in general? Believers all over the world and of all religions who go to prayer houses make their submission to unseen ( or seen ) almighty have mainly two objectives. To secure or earn, prosperity, peace and happiness in this world and also for a better salvation of their soul after death. I mean for hell or heaven, fear or greediness in their mind. Now let's pick the word 'peace'. To enjoy a peaceful life one needs to have good relation and possibly a helping attitude towards his or her surroundings. But problem is, the word peace most cases is overshadowed by the word prosperity because of the immense demand of it in our heart. So, in reality we don't see so much practice of those which help to keep peace in the society. Result...? Outcome of our prayer basically turns into a sort of selfishness. Not talking about happiness because some people may be even become happy just to look at the misery of others! Actually, human mind is so weird, complex, time and circumstance dependent,  that there is no general equation to summarize this.

Vast majority of the people in this world is like me. They are very much reluctant to look deeper and think about the next steps. Most of us, we don't read ( basically lot of us have no opportunity to read ) and among the readers, a very few of them read with any depth. I am not referring to any religious book at this time. Even among the readers of novels and books,  most of us prefer to read a novel which we can finish in few hours and after few hours forget all about it. Get no moral, no character that can scratch our heart for a long time. That’s why Humayun Ahmed is way more popular to us than Akhteruzzaman Elias or the generation before writer Manik Bandopadhya. Here in the western hemisphere  the picture is also same. J. K. Rowling's  Harry Potter has a huge success over other contemporary good books. Not sure , at present time, if we have a writer like Hermann Hesse, how popular he could be? Well, we have to acknowledge that time has been changed, and moral values has also been changed (! ), thus the taste of readers has been changed. It’s animation time, more illusion and more fantasy time. Not much reality feelings, this generation is suffering from virtual reality sickness. A cell phone or toy is much more friendly to a kid than their real life playmate. Okay.. but problem is, only one motive is working behind all these changes and that is the ' CAPITAL GAIN OF ALL THE  BIG CORPORATIONS..! ', and that is the very alarming thing. The world is now a complete hostage to them. They are the world and for their endless greediness this world is going to create another Frankenstein of its own.

Who can prevent it? What's the way to prevent it? Is there any general formula or common solution to get rid of these monsters or it should be an individual effort? Not sure yet, but one thing is sure that we need to turn back our mind from all these alluring objects of distractions, for those we pay a lot of our hard earned  money and precious time but realistically we make a very little use of it. Time to think for that is now.Trackless again..?! I think I need to build a fence along my pathway or need a hard liner head master on the top of my head! So, to bring ourselves at a firm stand point like this, it’s very important to develop our Spirituality. We need to educate ourselves to increase our Spiritual Richness. How..? Is religion a pathway to that? How great was its success in past and how much will it be in future? I have already mentioned a bit the role of religions in past and present and its influence on rich and powerful and on poor. Almost all of us, we know about religion through Preachers' or Imams' speeches and sermons. Very few of us read it in depth and even when we do that, right at the beginning we already in firm belief that these holy books are all heavenly book and every alphabet of it is true and we have to obey it from coma to semicolon. But quite a few things of it now has no match with our present world and even our 21st century realization about life. We believe those sermons blindly but to survive we match our activities with crooked and not so straight forward ways of life. Yes, we go to prayer house, which Muslims do even 5 times a day and just doing that we think, oh..  we are doing great things and bring some sort of satisfaction in our mind. And only doing this we start thinking ( few exceptions are every where ) we are great guys and God will save us in this and next world. That's all,  rest of our activities and thinking are full of dishonesty and wickedish. No help for others, very seldomly do we have true contribution towards humanity and the worst thing, few of us find a weird motivation that our way is the best and we are the superior of superiors! If we think, going to prayer houses regularly is the way to build ourselves as a good person then that is only the first step. If it does not clean our inner sight and go through next steps forward in real life practice then it’s just waste of time. So, what is explained up to now about our character just only two words for that. We are just a very Selfish Creature of this planet. And we are doing this for thousands of years! 

Now what our respected Priests, Imams and religious leaders are about? First thing they are not any specially made people to do some special generous thing for human kind. All the needs, appetite, desire and hope we general people have  they are not exception to that – it is important to remember they are human beings too. They just choose or in some way are bound to choose that profession for their living like  we all do. Most of their speech and sermon barely has anything that helps us to increase our spiritual thought. Yes, they talk about lot of good things, like to be very kind and well behaved with relatives and neighbor but mainly it covers more of fear and greediness ( to be rewarded ) about this and next world. Being a Muslim ( or can say by born having more opportunities to get involve with Islamic Rituals ), what I have seen that, Islamic mentors talk more about keeping the women confined within Hijab, Burkah and boundary walls, about hell and heaven, about punishment and reward than how we can develop our heart with spirituality. According to Quran, our soul has three levels. 1. Nafs. Al – Ammarah, 2. Nafs Al – Lawwamah and 3. Nafs Al - Mutma'innah ( at this time not going for description of these levels ). According to Kabbalah, also there are five levels of our soul, in ascending order they are, 1. Nefesh, 2. Ruach, 3. Neshama, 4. Chaya and 5. Yechida ( again not going for details about these levels here ). I have never heard that after or before prayer Muslim Imams discuss about this in easy way to make us understand in our own language. I have also no idea whether it is discussed in other religion groups, such as in Synagogue or Churches by their respective priests. But still it's a simple understanding, if we can enlighten ours soul spiritually then we don't need to worry about all those things. Straight forward, we will do good work not for getting rewarded in this life or next life and neither for fear of anything. We will do this because our logical judgement says to do that. Because our soul wants to do that. 

Believing in God, Hell and Heaven is a blind faith. May be initially it may help us a bit to enrich our soul for time being but unless until logically we stablish in our heart which is good or bad and made accountable to ourselves we will never be able to improve conscience of humanity. Lao Tzu ( 601 BC, China ), Socrates ( 399 BC, Greece ) Shams Tabrizi ( 1185 AD, Iran ) Lalon Shah ( 1172 AD, Bangladesh ) all these great philosophers  were born way apart from each other considering time. They were also from different area and culture of the world but in terms of their philosophy about life they meet at the same junction point. Philosophy they developed barely had any influence of religion. Rather they gathered their perception and realization of a better life from the nature, from the real world experience. So, it’s not mandatory that to be a good human being someone needs to follow a religious path. “ You have to grow from inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul”… Swami Vivekananda.

Often we see, religious sentiment is being used to achieve political gain. I know most common answer for this, oh.. it’s not religion's fault. Sort of tired by listening to this answer. It is clear that politics is not a fair game at present time ( it never was ) and it can't be. Because it’s a game of achieving and securing power. Then why are religions getting involved with this for thousands of years rather than trying to enlighten our soul spiritually? Most of us we know about that famous 'divide and rule' and communal riot which occurred during the 1947 independence process of Indian Sub Continent from British Colony. Political leaders used it. Independent countries divided their territories based on religious division. Which they could not overcome yet! Another example of this is the Babri Mosque issue. Before the demolition of Babri Masjid ( December 6, 1992 ) by the Hindu Activists of Vishva Hindu Parisad and it’s allies anytime before that a maximum of 2 seats BJP had in Indian Lok Sava ( upper assembly ). Their appearance was almost insignificant in Indian politics.  Just only using religious division issue, in the very next election they emerged as  one of the biggest party in India. And now all we know who they are. Possibly same thing could happen in Bangladesh if Jamat E Islam and their wings did not stand on traitor side during our great independence war.

Just a simple question comes to mind. Specially for those who believe in hell and heaven. I assume, the way the picture of heaven is portrayed, no doubt it’s the much better place to be in than any lavish life on earth. Then rather than doing all unethical and evil work to survive and stay here why we don't stay honest and die. Even if we die sooner then what is the problem if we believe we are going to a better place? On the other hand, the soul we have now, after death if we are blessed to get a gate pass of heaven and carry there this soul unchanged then it will not remain heavenly anymore. Rather it will be again tainted with earthly fault and vices.

Though, living as an immigrant in North America, still my emotion is very much fueled and fumed by my birth land Bangladesh. That's why even though it seems irrelevant, still feel like to write few lines about our present growing generation there. A quite significant portion of this generation, by their outfits and apparent prayer practice   trying to prove that they are the follower of Wahhabi Ultra Conservative Islamic path. But surprisingly, underneath of that, their mind shape and activities are rapidly embracing the trash part of western culture. In their music tune, television and other social festivities their identity is just pro Indian or can say even Punjabi blended. What about moral values..? A rapid growing solar eclipse is distinctly visible in that horizon!   So, what has Bangladesh left for it’s own? A long breath..! 

Couple of weeks before my wife and I went to visit an antiques fair. We were just browsing through items in front of a stall. An old pair of customers came in front of the stall (assume they are a couple), by outfit and appearance decent looking, and seemed to be of Caucasoid background, became curious about a nice looking greenish colour glass set. So, the vendor was giving some description and history of the merchandise. As soon as she mentioned that the glass set is made of Iran, the old customer lady told oh..  it’s from Iran..? It is dangerous..!! Goodness, I Just felt like a thunder bolt struck in my ear!. Looking around I asked myself again, am I living in 21st century..? I know, we have been brain washed many ways. Media imperialism is one of those. The western world spends billions every year to broadcast propaganda to make people like us believe their false fabricated story about their enemy parties. Sometimes it is accompanied by religious faith and belief too. I would like to bring at least one example of this media imperialism. Days before the downfall of former communist leader and dictator Nicolae Ceausescu of Rumania in 1989 all the western media (VOA, BBC and so and so) were continuously broadcasting that Ceausescu's soldiers killed thousands of people in the city name Timisoara. Numbers were different from media to media, but the range was always between 35000 to 72000. Question came in mind that a city where the population is not even three hundred thousand, how come thirty five thousand (just considering the least number one) got killed? Keep digging for the real number and almost a year later we came to know the number was 72! Does not matter. In the meantime, downfall of Ceausescu is done successfully. So, this is called the western media imperialism. Well, the Russian's have also do the same thing though their network and audience is not that vast. Then where is our minimum level of self judgement, minimum level of conscience for humanity. Still very curious to know, what darkness and cloud sealed inside the heart and mind of this generous looking old pair. What possibly could motivate them to think through out their lives? 

Communist system soon disappeared from earth because we people is still way far behind to uplift our soul to that level and I doubt ever will be. Well, also possibly to some extent this system has conflict with the natural selection process. But how hard it is to sit inside our own mind  and try to ask a few basic questions about the universality of our common happiness, sorrows, pain and equality. Do we need to practice religion or need some sort of high level mentoring for that? No. Just need to make a try to find the very easy truth. The two biggest obstacles for that are money and selfism. We need money to survive, to live a decent life. But how much..? Most of us have a feeling, this I want to be mine, that I want to be mine and if possible this whole world I want to be mine..! Don't think for a moment that damn!..., I myself am not mine. Since I can not guarantee myself to live for the next moment then it is not worth to think ' I myself is mine'. So, why we run after so much money? “ He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he like to have” .. Socrates.

I assume most of the country has a way to check how we earned the money. Also there are terms like black money or white money. I feel like there should be another bar about how we spend our money. There must be a set ceiling regarding how much we should be allowed to spend our money for lavish amusement. It does not matter how we earn it. Doing job, doing business, black or white does not matter. We should not be allowed to make a budget of 100 million dollar for our daughter's wedding. We should not be allowed to have a 500 million dollar yacht for someone’s personal amusement only. The world can not afford to spend 50 thousand dollars for a night to stay in a luxury hotel. Does not matter how we earned or inherited this money. For all these, the only resource place is this mother earth. And this for every people who lives here now and  for the future generations to come. Consider that billions of babies and children in this world have no bed to sleep, no food at night, wake up and emerge through the day in an empty stomach, die without treatment. A filthy show of wealth in this world should be considered as a crime by law. A crime against humanity. It is just like someone laughing on a brutal picture that says a military boot on the chest of an innocent baby in a war torn zone. Doing this, if anyone dares to call themselves a human being, declare him or herself as the best creature of the planet, then shame on them. We should try to make this world a fair stage at least to some extent. 

As I mentioned, we progressed a lot over the centuries. Time to time we have taken steps towards humanity. We invented religions to salvage ourselves from sufferings. Though indeed, that created divisions within us. But still we should acknowledge our achievements. Yes, these achievements were always not one step forward then take the next step forward from there. And that is the shocking news. In recent days, clearly we observe the racial supremacist and ultra nationalism type of feeling again in rise world wide. So in different time points in history, we take one step forward, and few steps back.  Which is death towards the all important humanity, and which we thought we left behind after 2nd world war. 

The story of Kunta Kinte is a real life story. Nothing is fabricated, nothing is exaggerated. He is just an example, just an icon of African – American history  and slavery. On the road to this civilization, there were billions of Kunta Kinte whose lives were a tale of this or more severe brutality. The truth is, the world is still a pit hole of its shameless existence.  And this is very shocking! It’s a feeling which brings to mind  that song again and again..

“ Old man river
That old man river
He don't say nothing
But he must know something
Cause he just keeps rolling
He keeps rolling along….”

… He must say something to sometime. He must tell what we have behind our mask. He must reveal the truth that we carry inside our blood. He must show the path to us to rectify ourselves. Otherwise, this journey towards a civilized human world ( if we realize that technological development is not the only index of civilization ) will always remain in a faulty ferries wheel. One that never reaches at it’s peak but comes downward  again and again..!!

Toronto